Hi I'm Kevin Hicks and welcome to my YouTube channel
the History Squad. Now today's video is on about Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII
and how she was used, abused and then finally executed on the orders of the king for treason.
So Catherine Howard who was she yeah? Obviously she was a Tudor lass, born around 1523,
we're not sure. She was born in Lambeth yeah, part of London. Her father Lord Edmund Howard
and her mother Joyce Culpepper. Now they had six children together one of which was Catherine but
her mother had already got five which made Catherine child number 10 for her mother.
Wow. Now her mother and father die while Catherine is quite young but traditionally they used
to farm out their children, especially if you were one of the poorer gentry,
you would farm out your children to the more wealthy and it was the Norfolk family, that
was her uncle, that was the duke of Norfolk and it was the Duchess of Norfolk who actually takes in
the young Catherine into her household. And she lives with the other cousins shall we say in the
maid’s dormitory and this is where the story truly begins. So the young Catherine finds herself in a
dormitory with other cousins in a large house, one of the houses of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk,
who doesn't really care that much what these girls are getting up to and this is the sad side of it,
because when she's very young, I've actually read she was as young as 11 maybe 12,
but because we don't know her date of birth it's hard to substantiate. But this man Henry Mannox,
he is one of the music teachers and he there's only one way to describe it. He abuses her right?
I've read various accounts, he's much older, he was the same age,
all these different things. From what I can glean he was much older and he basically helped himself.
It's written down that he knew her private parts. It's questionable whether they actually
had intercourse because they were keeping things quiet yeah, but there was a lot of this
kind of thing going on of a night. Doors would be opened yeah, and food and drink would be smuggled
up to the girls and men would come along and help themselves. Nowadays of course we do,
we call it abuse. So at a very young age Catherine is becoming aware that men find her attractive,
that her body, her sexuality is is developing and when she moves out of the house to Lambeth
she's introduced to a visitor there, uh Francis Dereham, and there's a bit of a spark for sure,
and they carry on an affair. It's her first love and they call each other husband and wife, but
this will come back to bite them because now we see how Catherine is going to be used. She is
attractive, vivacious, a sense of humor. She's not well educated but she can read and write,
but the one thing she doesn't understand is the politics of the day. Just how dangerous
the court of Henry VIII really is. So you imagine that you have a boyfriend, you pretend
that you're husband and wife but you're finding yourself kind of liberated, you're enjoying this
freedom that you have and you've also been taught how to have sex without getting pregnant.
She's quite happy when very, very early in the morning. You know this is a dark side
and you'll have to trace this yourself because I can't remember where I found this because it was
some years ago, but go figure. In the middle of the night, early in the morning whatever it was,
she's aroused from her bed or roused from her bed. Not aroused, sorry, she's roused from her bed,
bought downstairs and there's her uncle the Duke of Norfolk. She is paraded in front of him,
stripped, he looks her up and down and around, asks her a few questions she's then dismissed.
He will get her position at court she will be a lady and waiting to Anne of Cleeves.
She will be dangled in front of the eyes of Henry VIII
So sweet Catherine Howard finds herself at the court of Henry VIII, lady in waiting to Queen Anne
of Cleeves. She's been instructed by her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, a very powerful man, to dance,
make eyes, catch the eye of the king which she does. The king is kind of bowled over by this
beautiful young lady, vivacious and funny. Catherine Howard, that poor lass
has no idea what's coming. So Catherine Howard that beautiful lovely English rose, she’s married
to King Henry VIII on the 28th of July 1540. She was around 17, he was 49 or 50. She was slender,
beautiful, vivacious full of life. His waist was 52 inches around, he had terrible open
ulcer sores on his leg which stank and he had terrible, terrible breath. A match made in heaven.
Well her uncle yeah, the Duke of Norfolk, he believed it was a match in heaven because now
the Howard family are there, they're in the court of Henry VIII. All is going great, she dances,
she performs, but she's got to perform in one particular way, she's got to be made
pregnant by the King. Now think about this. He's a festering old man, look at his previous marriage
it was annulled because it was unconsummated, it was all blamed on poor Anne of Cleeves yeah?
No, I reckon it's the other way around. The King couldn’t, no matter how hard Catherine tried, she
was not going to get pregnant from that King. So let's then feed somebody in, a favourite actually
of the King, Thomas Culpepper. He is allowed access should we say, to the young queen. It's
Jayne Boleyn, the sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, Lady Rochfort, she is actually a member of the
staff for Catherine Howard. Now I've read about how liaisons were made how Culpepper was allowed
up to her room in secret and other liaisons but Catherine just wasn't aware of the court.
Boy did she have an enemy. You see she'd upset Princess Mary. Princess Mary had in her employ,
members of the household where Catherine Howard was a young girl. They tittle tattled
about a certain music instructor yeah? Henry Mannox. The princess tells Archbishop Cranmer,
he is an arch enemy of the Howard family, now the conspiracy, it all comes together
when Mannox is taken into custody and questioned. Now when I say question in the torture time,
in the in the torture, in the Tudor times, it's torture isn't it. They tortured him and he ‘I
didn't have any sexual relations no I didn't have intercourse, no, I did know her private parts’.
He then talks about Francis Dereham, they were gonna get married. Oh you see in law,
if you agree that you're gonna get married you are betrothed,
that's how it works. And you can't get married after that unless it all comes out, you tell
your prospective husband yeah actually I'm not a virgin I've had a relationship, we did discuss
about marriage but we're not going to do it anymore. None of that, so now they bring in Jane
Boleyn and she is absolutely terrified of being tortured. So terrified in fact that she loses
her sanity, she goes mad, she literally becomes mad during this entire process, so she by law
cannot be executed or anything, she's mad. The King is informed, he's furious
Culpepper and Dereham are actually put on trial for treason. They will be executed, hung drawn and
quartered except the King's favourite Thomas Culpepper is allowed just to have his head
chopped off. The queen, she is found guilty, treason, she will have her head cut off too.
So poor Catherine, she's been found guilty of treason, she's been removed to Sion Abbey,
there she has her titles and all of her possessions her jewels all of these things
systematically stripped from her. She is known as Mistress Catherine Howard. Well she's going to be
conveyed to the Tower to have her head cut off and that poor lass can barely stand. She’s manhandled
from her chambers down the stairs into a barge which has been covered over so nobody can see
it but this poor lass she can see up because they row underneath London Bridge and they slow down,
and they bring to her attention two freshly cut off heads Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpepper.
It must have broke her heart. And then as they row her into traitor's gate at the back of the tower,
‘why are we coming in here?’ This terrified young girl then has to be manhandled out of the barge.
Sir John Gauge, he is the constable of the tower, turns his face away with tears in his eyes
as Catherine is carried past him up to her chambers.
But she tries to compose herself, she has the block brought to her room,
she tries it out. Now one account says that the next day, was it the 13th of February 1542,
she's dressed in black. She walks composed to the scaffold, she's helped up the steps
she gives her speech in her gentle voice. But there is a little story I have, that she turned to
one of her ladies in waitings who was still there ‘I don't want to die, I've done nothing wrong
I'm too young to die’. She lowers her head. Bang the head is off. She's placed in a coffin nearby,
but the headsman had somebody else to deal with now. Jane Boleyn, insane, mad. You don't execute
a mad person, but Henry VIII in his spite changes the law and this decrepit woman is held down on
the block forcibly, which is dripping in blood and gore. This woman had to kneel in sweet Catherine's
blood and her head was hacked off. The two bodies are buried in the Tower chapel of St Peters.
You can actually go and there is now a tile commemorating them. This to me is such a sad story
of a young woman who suffered abuse, was used and finally killed for what? Often history
looks at her as being nothing more than a naughty girl, stupid, but I hope my little story here has
given you an insight of how she was truly used. Now I can't say hey i hope you enjoyed this,
well I hope you found it interesting. If you did thumbs up, if you're a subscriber hey
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